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A JAMAICA SLAVE 
PLANTATION 



ULRICH B. PHILLIPS 



REPRINTED FROM THE 



VOL. XIX., NO. 3 APRIL, 1914 






F- 



[Reprinte< troin Thk American Historical Review VdI. XIX., No. 3, Apr., 1914.] 



A JAMAICA SLAVE PLANTATION 

When Lord Chesterfield endeavored in 1767 to buy his son a 
seat in Parhament, he learned " that there was no such thing as a 
borough to be had now, for that the rich East and West Indians had 
secured them all at the rate of three thousand pounds at least". 
The nabobs from the Antilles were rivalling those from India ^ in 
their display. The sugar islands were the most cherished of the' 
imperial possessions, and the sugar estates were the greatest and most 
famous industrial enterprises in the world. Bulky descriptions of 
the West Indian regime, of an excellence never attained by the ac- 
counts of the continental colonies, found sale in large editions, and 
few were the moneyed men of England who felt no stir at the 
rumors of Jamaica planters' profits. But Jamaica's heyday was 
already waning, for her soils were becoming depleted and sugar 
prices had fallen. Of the three chief waiters on Jamaica in the 
later eighteenth century, Long, Edwards, and Beckford, the two last 
illustrated in their own lives the extremes of planters' fortunes. 
Edwards was one of the nabobs who sat in the British House of 
Commons, but Beckford wrote his Descriptive Account of Jamaica 
in the Fleet prison where he lay in 1790, an insolvent debtor at the 
end of a planting career. These general works have left little to be 
desired except the intimate details w-hich might be drawn only from 
the routine working of individual plantations. Records of this kind 
are of course exceedingly few; but we are not wholly bereft. 

Rose Price, Esquire, was the manager of Worthy Park plan- 
tation and its outlying properties in St. John's parish, Jamaica, 
belonging to " Robert Price of Penzance in the Kingdom of Great 
Britain Esquire"; and Rose Price had an eye to the edification of 
posterity. Seeing that " the Books of Estates are the only Records 
by which future Generations can inform themselves of the manage- 
ment of Plantations ", he set down directions in detail for the making 
and preservation of elaborate accounts of current operations. The 
special books for the sugar mill, the rum distillery, the commissary, 
and the field-labor routine, which he ordered kept, have apparently 
been lost ; but the " great plantation book " for the years from 1792 
to 1796 inclusive has survived and come to my hands. This com- 
prises yearly inventories, records of the increase and decrease of 
slaves and draught animals, vestry returns, salary lists, vouchers, 

(543) 



544 U. B. Phillips ; 

crop summaries, and accounts of the receipt and distribution of im- 
plements, clothing, food-stuffs, and other supplies.^ 

This plantation, which in its organization and experience appears 
to have been fully typical of the estates of the largest scale, lay near 
the centre of the island, perhaps twenty miles from the sea, on the 
rugged southern slope of the mountain chain. One of its depend- 
encies was Spring Garden " cattle pen ", lying higher on a near-by 
mountainside and serving as a place of recuperation for slaves and 
cattle as well as yielding a few oxen and some food-stuffs for the 
plantation. The other was Mickleton, presumably a farmstead used as 
a relay station for the teams hau;ling sugar and rum to Port Henderson, 
where they were embarked for Kingston on the way to market at 
London. The plantation itself probably contained several thousand 
acres, of which about 560 were in sugar-cane, several score in guinea- 
grass for grazing, and a few in plantain and cocoa groves, while the 
rest was in woodland with occasional clearings where the negro 
families cultivated their own food crops in their hours of release 
from gang labor. 

A cane field was not ripe for its first harvest (the " plant cane ") 
until the second winter after its planting. When the stalks were then 
cut, new shoots ("rattoons") would spring up from the old roots 
and yield a diminished second crop the next winter, and so on for 
several years more, the output steadily growing smaller. After the 
fourth crop, according to the routine on Worthy Park, the field was 
planted anew. Thus in any year, while 560 acres were in constant 
cultivation, about one-fifth of the fields were freshly planted and 
four-fifths were harvested. 

The slaves on the estate at the beginning of 1792 numbered 355, 
of whom 150 constituted the main field gangs; thirty-four were 
artificers and gang foremen ; forty were watchmen, gardeners, and 
cattle tenders ; thirteen were in the hospital corps ; twenty-two were 
on the domestic staff ; twenty-four girls and boys made up the " grass 
gang " ; thirty-nine were young children ; and thirty-three were in- 
valids and superannuated. From the absence of indications that any 
of these were freshly imported Africans it may be assumed that all 
were seasoned negroes. The draught animals comprised eighty 
mules and one hundred and forty oxen. The stock of slaves was 

1 1 am not acquainted with the history of this document beyond the fact that 
it came into my possession through an auction sale in New York a few years ago. 
The book, which measures twelve by eight inches, contains about five hundred 
pages of brittle paper, similar in texture to the modern product of wood-pulp, 
though with a somewhat oily quality. The accounts which fill the volume were 
made in excellent form. A few of the pages which were ruled into columns are 
now completely split into strips, however, and a number of others are more or 
less broken. 



A Jamaica Slave Playilation 545 

not adequate for the full routine of the plantation, for in this year 
" jobbing gangs " from the outside were employed at a cost of f 1832, 
reckoned probabl}" in Jamaica currency which stood at thirty per 
cent, discount. The jobbing contracts were recorded at rates from 
2S.6d. to 3.y. per laborer per day. 

During the year the proprietor began to make great additions to 
his working force, with a view apparently to dispensing with the 
services of jobbing gangs. In March he bought ten new Africans, 
five men and five women ; and in October ninety more, comprising 
twenty-five men, twenty-seven women, sixteen boys, sixteen girls, 
and six children, all new Congoes. In 1793 he added eighty-one 
more, fifty-one males and thirty females, part Congoes and part 
Coromantees, and nearly all of them about eighteen to twenty 
\ears old. 

The advice of experienced planters was entirely opposed to such 
a proceeding as this. Edward Long, for example, had written : 

The introduction of too many recruits at once has sometimes proved 
fatal to them. It is very evident, that a small number can be much easier 
and better provided for, lodged, fed, and taken care of, than a multitude. 
The planter therefore, who buys only eight or ten at a time, will in the 
end derive more advantage from them, than the planter who buys thirty ; 
for, by the greater leisure and attention in his power to bestow upon 
them, he will greatly lessen the ordinary chances against their life, and 
the sooner prepare them for an effectual course of labour. The com- 
parison, indeed, founded upon fact and observation, is, that, at the end 
of three years, the former may possibly have lost one fifth, but the other 
will most probably have lost one half, of their respective numbers. - 

All of the island authorities who wrote on the subject endorsed 
these precepts, but the Worthy Park administration was nothing 
daunted thereby. Thirty new huts were built ; special cooks and 
nurses were detailed for the service of the new negroes ; and quanti- 
ties of special food-stuffs were bought — yams, plantains, flour, fresh 
and salt fish, and fresh beef heads, tongues, hearts, and bellies ; but 
it is not surprising to find that the next outlay for equipment was 
for a large new hospital in 1794, costing £341 for building its brick 
walls alone. The emergency became pressing. Some of the new- 
comers, as was common in such case, developed yaws, a chronic and 
contagious African disease of the blood and skin closely akin to 
syphilis. These had to be lodged in an isolation hospital tended by 
a special nurse and cook, and worked, when worked at all, in a sep- 
arate gang under a separate foreman. But yaws was a trifle as 
compared with dysentery — the " bloody flux " as it was then called. 
Pleurisy, pneumonia, fever, and dropsy had also to be reckoned with. 

2 Long, The History of Jamaica (London, i744). H- 435- 



546 U. B. Phillips 

About fifty of the new negroes were quartered for several years in 
a sort of hospital camp at Spring Garden, where the work for even 
the able-bodied was much lighter than on Worthy Park. 

One of the new negroes died in 1792, and another the next year. 
With the spring of 1794 the period of heavy mortality began. Two 
pages of the record for this year are broken and partly missing, 
"rom the pages and fragments remaining it may be gathered that the 
total of the year's deaths was fifty-two (thirty-seven males and 
fifteen females) of which at least thirty-one were new negroes. One 
of the new women died in child-bed, one of the men died of a brain 
disorder, one of a paralytic stroke, and two were thought to have 
killed themselves. Virtually all the other deaths of newcomers were 
due to dysentery. By 1795 this disease was no longer epidemic. In 
that year the total of deaths was twenty-three, including at least five 
new negroes, two of these dying from dirt-eating,^ one from yaws, 
and two from ulcers. The three years of the seasoning period were 
now ended, with about three-fourths of the number imported still 
alive. This loss was perhaps less than was usual in such cases; but 
it demonstrates the strength of shock involved in the transplantation 
from Africa, even after the severities of the "middle passage" had 
been survived, and after the most debilitated negroes had been culled 
out at the ports. In 1796 the new negroes were no longer dis- 
criminated in the mortality record. The total of deaths for the year 
was twenty-three, of which eight were from old age and decline, 
seven from dropsy, two each from fever, dysentery, and poison, one 
from consumption, and one from yaws. The outlay for jobbing 
gangs declined to ^1374 in 1793 and to ^506 in 1794. It rose to ^632 
in 1795. but disappeared in the final year of the record. 

3 Of the " fatal habit of eating dirt ", Thomas Roughley, who on his title-page 
described himself as " nearly twenty years a sugar planter in Jamaica ", wrote in 
his Planter s Guide (London, 1823, pp. 118-120) : " Nothing is more horribly dis- 
gusting, nothing more to be dreaded, nothing exhibiting a more heart-rending, 
ghastly spectacle, than a negro child possessed of this malady. Such is the craving 
appetite for this abominable custom that few, either children or adults, can be 
broken of it when once they begin to taste and swallow its insidious, slow poison. 
For if by incessant care, watchfulness, or keeping them about the dwelling house, 
giving them abundance of the best nourishing food, stomachic medicines, and kind 
treatment, it is possible to counteract the effects and habit of it for some time, 
the creature will be found wistfully and irresistibly to steal an opportunity of 
procuring and swallowing the deadly substance. The symptoms arising from it 
are a shortness of breathing, almost perpetual languor, irregular throbbing, weak 
pulse, a horrid cadaverous aspect, the lips and whites of the eyes a deadly pale 
(the sure signs of malady in the negro), the tongue thickly covered with scurf, 
violent palpitation of the heart, inordinate swelled belly, the legs and arms re- 
duced in size and muscle, the whole appearance of the body becomes a dirty 
yellow, the flesh a quivering, pellucid jelly. The creature sinks into total indiffer- 
ence, insensible to everything around it, till death at last declares his victory in 
its dissolution." 



A Jamaica Slave Planfaiio7i 547 

The list of slaves made at the beginning of 1794 is the only one 
in which full data are preserved as to ages, colors, health, and occu- 
pations. The ages given were of course in many cases mere approx- 
imations. The "great house negroes" head the list, fourteen in 
number. Four of these were " housekeepers ", of whom two were 
forty-year-old women of " sambo " color, i. e., between mulatto and 
black, and the other two were mulatto girls of nineteen and eight 
years. There were three waiting boys, twenty, nineteen, and ten 
years old, one of them black and two mulatto. Susannah, black, 
fifty-five years old, and Joanny, sambo, twenty-six, were washer- 
women; Penzance, black, fifty, was the cook; Spain, forty-five but 
not able-bodied, and Old Lucy, sixty, both black, were gardeners ; 
and Old Tom, black, fifty, had the task of carrying grass. Quadroon 
Lizette, who had been hired out for several years to Peter Douglas, 
the owner of a jobbing gang, was manumitted during this year. 

The slaves listed at the overseer's house, forty-two in number, 
included domestic servants, the hospital corps, and a group in in- 
dustrial pursuits. Fanny, twenty-seven, mulatto, Harodine, twenty- 
four, sambo, and Sychie, black, sixty, who was troubled with the 
bone ache, were housekeepers ; Peggy and Sally, mulatto girls of 
thirteen and fourteen, were " simstresses " ; Jenny, forty-one, black, 
and Nancy, nineteen, mulatto, were washerwomen ; Esther, thirty- 
five, black, was cook; and Harry, twenty-one, John, fifteen, and 
Richmond, fourteen, all black, were waiting boys. In the nursing 
and industrial groups all were black except one mulatto boy of ten 
years, a hog tender. Will Morris, the " black doctor ", headed the 
hospital corps; Henrietta, sixty, was midwife; Dolly, thirty-six, and 
Sally, twenty-eight, were hospital nurses ; Douglas, sixty, Grace, 
sixty, Emma, forty-five, and Blind Olive, thirty, tended the new 
negroes ; Cimbrie, sixty-five. Old IVTolly, sixty, and Old Beneba were 
in charge of young children ; and Old Sylvia, sixty, was field nurse 
for the suckling children of the women in the gangs. Abba, forty, 
who had lost a hand, and Flora were cooks to the " big gang ", and 
Bessey, forty, cook to the second gang. Prince, thirty-five, who had 
elephantiasis, was a groom ; Yellow's Cuba and Peg's Nancy, both 
sixty, had charge of the poultry house'; Dontcare, forty, and Solo- 
mon, twenty-three, the one ruptured and the other " distempered ", 
were hog tenders, along with Robert the mulatto boy above men- 
tioned ; Ouashy Prapra and Abba's Moll, sixty-five and sixty, 
mended pads ; and Quamina, forty, and six others, sixty to sixty- 
five, gathered grass and hog feed. 

Next are listed the watchmen, thirty-one in number, ranging 
from twenty-seven to seventy-five years in age, and all black but the 

AM. HIST. REV., VOL. XIX. — 36 



y 



548 U. B. Fhillips 

mulatto foreman. Only six were described as able-bodied. Among 
the disabilities mentioned were a bad sore leg, a broken back, lame- 
ness, partial blindness, distemper, weakliness, and cocobees. The 
number in this night-watch was apparently not unusual. When the 
cane crop was green it might be severely damaged by the invasion of 
hungry cattle, and when it approached maturity a spark might set 
the fields into conflagration. A law of Barbados, in precaution 
against fire, prohibited the smoking of tobacco on paths bordering 
cane-fields. 

A considerable number of the negroes already mentioned were in 
such condition that little work could be required of them. Those 
.completely laid off were nine superannuated, two men and seven 
women ranging from seventy to eighty-five years old ; four invalids, 
fourteen to thirty-five years old ; and three women relieved of work, 
as by law required, for having reared six children each. 

Among the tradesmen, virtually all the blacks were stated to be 
fit for field work, but the five mulattoes and the one quadroon, 
though mostly youthful and healthy, were described as not fit for 
the field. There were eleven carpenters, eight coopers, four sawyers, 
two blacksmiths, three masons, and twelve cattlemen, each squad 
with a foreman; and there were two ratcatchers. The tradesmen 
were all in early manhood or middle age except Old Quashy, the 
head carpenter, Old England, a sawyer, and Poole, Teckford, and 
Boot Cudjoe, cattlemen, who were from sixty to sixty-five, and 
Reeves and Little Sam, cattle boys, of fifteen and fourteen years. 

The two ratcatchers followed an essential trade. Beckford wrote 
in his account of sugar-cane culture: 

The rats are very great enemies to this plant, but particularly in pro- 
portion to its advance to ripeness. It will hardly be credited how very 
numerous these reptiles are in the Island of Jamaica, and what destruc- 
tion, especially if the canes be lodged [i. e., fallen to the ground], they 
annually commit upon a plantation : in a not less proportion do they injure 
the crops than a diminution of five hogsheads of sugar in every hundred, 
without adding much in proportion, by those that are tainted, to the 
increase of rum. Many and unremitting endeavours are daily put in prac- 
tice for their extirpation. . . . Great numbers are taken off by poison 
immediately after the crop, and when their natural food is apparently 
ex'hausted ; many are killed by dogs ; and prodigious quantities destroyed 
by the negroes in the fields, when the canes are cut; and such innumer- 
able proportions by the watchmen who are dispersed over the different 
parts of the plantation, to protect them from general trespass, and the 
particular destruction of these animals, that I was informed by a man of 
observation and veracity, that upon the estate of which, as overseer, he 
had charge, not less than nine and thirty thousand were caught by the 
latter, and, if I remember right, in the short space of five or six months.* 

* Beckford, A Descriptive Account of the Island of Jamaica (London, 1790), 
I- 55. 56. 



A Ja})iaica Slave Plantation 549 

In the "weeding gang", a sort of industrial kindergarten in 
which most of the children from five to eight years old were kept, 
as much for control as for achievement, there were twenty pick- 
aninnies, all black, under Mirtilla as " driveress ", who had borne 
and lost seven children of her own. Thirty-nine children were too 
young for the weeding gang, at least six of whom were quadroons. 
Two of these children, Joanney's Henry Richards, quadroon, and 
Joaniiey's Valentina, w-hose color is not stated, were manumitted 
in 1795. 

Fifty-five, all new negroes except Darby the foreman, and in- 
cluding Blossom the infant daughter of one of the women, com- 
prised the Spring Garden squad. Nearly all of these were twenty 
or twenty-one years old. The men included Washington, Franklin, 
Hamilton, Burke, Fox, Milton, Spencer, Hume, and Sheridan ; the 
women. Spring, Summer, July, Bash full, Virtue, Frolic, Gamesome, 
Lady, Madame, Dutchess, Mirtle, and Cowslip. Seventeen of the 
number died within the year. 

The "big gang" on Worthy Park numbered 137, comprising 
sixty-four men from nineteen to sixty years old and seventy-three 
w^omen of from nineteen to fifty years, though but four of the 
women and nine of the men, including Quashy, sixty, the " head 
driver " or foreman, were past forty years. The gang included 
Douglas Cufifee, forty, " head home wainman ", May, twenty-three, 
"head road wainman" and ploughman, McGregor, forty, head 
muleman, McPherson, forty, McAllister, forty, and France, twenty- 
five, distillers, Tim's Cubena, forty, boiler, McDonald and McKein, 
each forty-five, sugar potters, and Raphael and Forest, each twenty- 
five, " sugar guards " for the wagons carrying the crop to port. All 
members of the gang were described as healthy, able-bodied, and 
black. It was this battalion of the stalwart, armed with hoes and 
"bills" (sugar knives), whose work would "make or break" the 
proprietor. A considerable number in the gang were new negroes, 
but only seven of the whole died in this year of heaviest mortality. 

The " second gang ", employed in a somewhat lighter routine 
under Sharper, fifty, as foreman, comprised forty women, and 
twenty-seven men ranging from fifteen to sixty years old, all black. 
While most of them were healthy, five were consumptive, four were 
ulcerated, one was " inclined to be bloated ", one was " very weak ", 
and Pheba was "healthy but worthless". Eleven of this gatjidied 
within the year. j^ 

Finally, in the third or " small gang", for yet lighter woffe under 
Baddy as driveress with Old Robin, sixty, as assistant, were listed 
sixty-eight boys and girls, all black, mostly between twelve and 



550 U. B. Phillips 

fifteen years old, but including Mutton, eighteen, and Cyrus, six. 
Cyrus and the few others below the normal age may have been 
allowed to join this gang for the companionship of brothers or sis- 
ters, or some of them may have been among Baddy's own four 
children. Five of the gang died within the year. 

Among the 528 slaves all told — 284 males and 244 females — 
seventy-four, equally divided between the sexes, were fifty years 
old and upwards. If the number of the new negroes, virtually all 
of whom were doubtless in early life, be subtracted from the gross, 
it appears that one-fifth of the seasoned stock had reached the half 
century, and one-eighth were sixty years old and over. This is a 
good showing of longevity. 

About eighty of the seasoned women were within the age limits 
of childbearing. The births entered in the chronological record 
averaged nine per year for the five years covered. This was hardly 
half as many as might have been expected under favorable condi- 
tions. Rose Price entered special note in 1795 of the number of 
children each woman had borne during her life, the number of these 
living at the time this record was made, and the number of miscar- 
riages each woman had had. The total of births thus recorded was 
345; of children then Hving 159; of miscarriages seventy-five. Old 
Quasheba and Betty Madge each had borne fifteen children ; and 
sixteen other women had borne from six to eleven each. On the 
other hand, seventeen women of thirty years and upwards had had 
no children and no miscarriages. It cannot be said whether or not 
these barren women had husbands, for matings were listed in the 
record only in connection with the births of children. 

The childbearing records of the women past middle age ran 
higher than those of the younger ones, to a somewhat surprising 
degree. Perhaps conditions on Worthy Park had been more favor- 
able at an earlier period, when the owner and his family may possibly 
have been resident there. The fact that more than half of the 
children whom these women had borne were dead at the time of the 
record comports with the reputation of the sugar colonies for heavy 
infant mortality. ° With births so infrequent and infant deaths so 
many it may well appear that the notorious failure of the island- 
bred stock to maintain its own numbers was not due to the working 
of the slaves to death. 

5 Sir Warner Bryan, attorney-general of Grenada, said, " It is generally 
remarked that H the children die under 2 years, and most of that Yz the first 9 
days, from the jaw-fall." Abridgment of the Minutes of Evidence taken before a 
Committee of the Whole House [o»] the Slave Trade, No. 2. (London, 1790), 
p. 48. Mr. John Castle, long a surgeon in Grenada, testified before the same 
committee that generally one-third of the negro children died in the first month 
of their lives, and that few of the imported women bore children. Ibid., p. 80. 



A Jamaica Slave Plantation 551 

The poor care of the young children ma\- be attributed largely to 
the absence of a white mistress, an absence characteristic of the 
Jamaica plantations. The only white woman mentioned in the 
parish returns of this estate was Susannah Phelps, doubtless the 
wife of Edward Phelps who drew no salary but received a yearly 
food allowance " for saving deficiency ", and who probably lived not 
on Worthy Park but at ]\Iickleton. 

In addition to Rose Price, who was not salaried 'but who may 
have received a manager's commission of six per cent, upon gross 
crop sales as contemplated in the laws of the colon} , the administra- 
tive staff of white men on Worthy Park comprised an overseer at 
i200, later £300 a year, and four bookkeepers at £50 to f6o. There 
was also a white carpenter at £120, and a white ploughman at £56. 
The overseer was changed three times during the time of the record, 
and die bookkeepers were generally replaced annually. The bache- 
lor staff were most probably responsible for the mulatto and quad- 
roon offspring and were doubtless responsible also for the occasional 
manumission of women and children. In 1795 and perhaps in other 
years the plantation had a contract for medical attendance by " J. 
Quier and G. Clark " at the rate of £140 per year. 

There is no true summer and winter in Jamaica, but a wet and 
a dry season instead — the former extending generally from May to 
November, the latter from December to April. The sugar-cane got 
its growth during the rains ; it ripened and was harvested during the 
drought. If things went well the harvest, or "grinding", began in 
January. All available hands were provided with bills and sent to the 
fields to cut the stalks and trim off their leaves and tops. The 
tainted canes were laid aside for the distillery ; the sound ones were 
sent at once to the mill. On the steepest hillsides the crop had often- 
times to be carried on the heads of the negroes or on the backs of 
mules to points which the carts could reach. 

The mill consisted merely of three cylinders, two of them set 
against the third, turned by wind, water, or cattle. The canes, tied 
into small bundles for better compression, were given a double 
squeezing while passing through the mill. The juice expressed 
found its way through a trough into the " boiling house " while the 
"" mill trash " or " megass "" was carted off to sheds and left to dry 
for later use as fuel under the coppers and stills. 

In the boiling house the cane-juice flowed first into ?!large recep- 

« 

tacle, the clarifier, where by treatment with lime and moderate heat 
it was separated from its grosser impurities. The juice then passed 
into the first copper, where evaporation by boiling began. This 

8 In Louisiana this is called " bagasse ". 



552 U. B. Phillips 

vessel on Worthy Park was of such a size that in 1795 one of the 
negroes fell in while it was full of boiling liquor and died ten days 
after his scalding. After further evaporation in smaller coppers the 
juice, now reduced to a syrup, was ladled into a final copper, the 
teache, for a last boiling and concentration ; and when the product 
of the teache was ready for crystallization it was carried to the 
" curing house ". 

The mill, unless it were a most exceptional one for the time, ex- 
pressed barely two-thirds of the juice from the canes ; the clarifier 
was not supplemented by filters; the coppers were wasteful of labor 
and fuel. But if the apparatus and processes thus far were crude 
by comparison with modern standards, the curing process was 
primitive by any standard whatever. The curing-house was merely 
a roof above, a timber framework on the main level, and a great 
shallow sloping vat at the bottom. The syrup from the teache 
was potted directly into hogsheads resting on the timbers, and 
was allowed to cool with too great rapidity and with occasional 
stirrings which are said by modern critics to have hindered more 
than they helped the crystallization. Most of the sugar stayed in 
the hogsheads, while the mother liquor, molasses, still carrying some 
of the sugar, trickled through perforations in the hogshead bottoms 
into the vat below. When the hogsheads were full of the crudely 
cured, moist, and impure " muscovado " sugar they were headed up 
and sent to port. The molasses was carried to vats in the distillery 
where with yeast and water added it fermented and when passed 
twice through the distilling process yielded rum.''' 

The grinding season, extending from January to spring or sum- 
mer according to the speed of harvesting, was the tiijie of heaviest 
labor on the plantations. If the rains came before the reaping was 
ended the work became increasingly severe, particularly for the 
draught animals, which must haul their loads over the muddy fields 
and roads. On Worthy Park the grinding was ended in May in 
some years ; in others it extended to July, x 

As soon as the harvest was ended preparations were begun for 
replanting the fields from which the crop of third rattoons had just 
been taken. The chief operation in this was the opening of broad 
furrows or " cane holes " about six feet apart. Five ploughs were 

7 This description of mill equipment and methods is drawn from eighteenth- 
century writings. Slightly improved apparatus introduced in the early nineteenth 
century was described in Thomas Roughley, The Jamaica Planter's Guide. As to 
sugar-cane cultivation and labor control, the general wdrks already mentioned 
were supplemented by Clement Caines in his Letters on the Cultivation of the 
Otahiete Cane (London, 1801), and by an anonymous "Professional Planter" in 
his Rules for the Management and Medical Treatment of Negro Slaves in the 
Sugar Colonies (London, 1803). 



A Jamaica Slave Plantation 553 

mentioned in the Worthy Park inventories, but only three plough- 
men were listed, one hired white and two negro slaves. Some of 
the hillside fields were doubtless too rough for convenient plough- 
ing, and the heat of the climate prevented the use of teams for such 
heavy work for more than a few hours daily ; but the lack of thrift 
and enterprise was doubtless even more influential. The smallness 
of the area planted each year demonstrates that the hoe was by far 
the main reliance. After the cane holes were made and manure 
spread, four canes were laid side by side continuously in each fur- 
row, and a shallow covering of earth was drawn over them. ^This 
completed the planting process. 

The holing and the planting occupied the major part of the " big 
gang" for most of the summer and fall. Meanwhile the wagons 
were hauling the sugar and rum to port, and the second and third 
gangs, with occasional assistance from the first, were cleaning the 
grass and weeds from the fields of growing cane and stripping the 
dry leaves from the stalks and drawing earth to the roots. With 
the return of the dry season cordwood must be cut in the mountains 
and brought to the boiling house to supplement the megass, and the 
roads and the works must be put in order for the stress of the coming 
harvest. Then came Christmas when oxen were slaughtered for the 
negroes and a feast was made and rules relaxed for a week of cele- 
bration by Christians and pagans alike. 

Rewards for zeal in service were given chiefly to the " drivers " 
or gang foremen. Each of these had for example a " doubled milled 
cloth coloured great coat" costing wshd. and a "fine bound hat 
with girdle and buckle" costing los.^d. As a more direct and fre- 
quent stimulus a quart of rum was served weekly to each of three ^ 
drivers, three carpenters, four boilers, two he-id cattlemen, two head 
mulemen, the " stoke-hole boatswain ", and the black doctor, and to 
the foremen respectively of the sawyers, coopers, blacksmiths, watch- 
men, and road wainmen, and a pint weekly to the head home wain- 
man, the potter, the midwife, and the young children's field nurse. 
These allowances totalled about three hundred gallons yearly. But 
a considerably greater quantity than this was distributed, mostly at 
Christmas perhaps, for in 1796 for example 922 gallons were re- 
corded of " rum used for the negroes on the estate ". Upon the 
birth of each child the mother was given a Scotch rug and a silver 
dollar. 4^ 

No records of whippings appear to have been kept, nor of crimes 
or misdemeanors except absconding. In the list of deaths for 1793, 
however, it was noted that Roman was shot and killed by a watch- 



554 U. B. Phillips 

man on a neighboring estate while stealing provisions from the negro 
grounds. 

The runaway slaves who were in hiding at the end of each 
quarter were usually listed in a quarterly report to the parish author- 
ities. In 1792 none were reported until the end of the year when it 
was stated that two were out, a man and a woman, the names not 
given. In March, 1793, these had returned, but Greenwich, May, 
and Beneba's Cuffee, men, and the woman called Strumpet had run 
off. The June report for this year is missing. In September, 
Greenwich, May, and Strumpet had returned, and Boot Cudjoe, 
Nero, Spring Garden Ouaw, Toney, and Abba's Moll had taken 
flight. In December Toney and Quaw had returned. London and 
Rumbold, a twelve-year-old boy, had now fled, but they came back 
within the next quarter. In the early months of 1794 Sam, October, 
Pilot, and Christian Grace had brief outings, and in the second 
quarter Ann and Prince ; and Cesar and Rhino now added their 
names to the list of the long-term runaways. In the third quarter 
Pulteney and Rippon, and in the fourth Dickie, made brief escapes, 
while Ann made a second and longer flight. Early in 1795 three 
runaways, veterans in a double sense for each was sixty years old, 
came back whether willingly or as captives. They were Sam a field 
hand, Boot Cudjoe a cattleman, and Abba's Moll, whose task was 
the mending of pads. Fletcher, Billy Scott, and Spring Garden Roger 
now took flight, and Ouaw for a second time. In February Billy 
Scott, along with Moses and Hester who were attempting escape, 
were taken up and lodged in a public v;orkhouse and sent back to 
the estate when claimed, at an expense of £4.11.9.4^^. In May 
i2..6s.2.y2d. was paid to the supervisor of the workhouse at Spanish 
Town as jail fees for Beneba's Cuffee ; but his name continued to 
appear in the plantation list of runaways. Perhaps he promptly 
departed again. In the second quarter the long-absconding Cesar 
was also returned, and Spring Garden Tom took flight. 

The recaptured absconders were now put into a special " vaga- 
bond gang " for better surveillance. This comprised Billy Scott, 
reduced from the capacity of mason and sugar guard ; Oxford who 
as head cooper had enjoyed a weekly quart of rum but had appar- 
ently betrayed a special trust ; Cesar who had followed the sawyer's 
trade ; and Moll and Rumbold, and the following whose names had 
not appeared in the quarterly lists : McLean, Green, Bob, Damsel, 
Polly, and the young boys Little Sam and Mulatto Robert. The 
gang was so wretchedly assorted for industrial purposes that it was 
probably not long before it was disbanded and its members dis- 
tributed to more proper tasks. 



A Jamaica Slave Plantation 555 

In the runaway list for the third quarter of 1795 three new 
names appear— Frank, Reilly, and Rennals. In November Appea 
fled, and Toney went upon a second truancy. Toney returned in 
January, 1796, and left for the third time the next month. About 
this time Sam, Strumpet, and Prince began second outings, but 
returned in the spring along with Beneba's Cuffee. Rightwell and 
Rosey now took short flights, and in November Sam took a third 
leave which again proved a brief one. In February, 1797, Quadroon 
Charles ran oft', and Rumbold for the second time. At the end of 
the next month, when the last of the runaway lists in this record 
was made, these two were still out. along with Nero who had fled 
in 1793, Fletcher and Appea in 1795, and Toney in 1796. Of these 
Fletcher was a distempered watchman forty-five years old, and the 
others were members of the big gang, forty-five, thirty, and sixty 
years old respectively. Obviously the impulse to run away was not 
confined to either sex nor to any age or class. The fugitives were 
utterly miscellaneous and their flights were apparently not organized 
but sporadic. 

These conclusions if extended into a generalization to cover the 
whole island would appear to be borne out by an analvsis of the 
notices of runaway slaves published by the workhouse officials in 
the newspapers. Throughout the year 1803, for which I have pro- 
cured these statistics from a file of the Royal Gazette of Kineston,^ 
the number of runaways taken into custody each week was fairly 
constant; and no group of slaves appears over-represented. Of the 
grand total of 1721 runaways advertised as in custody, 187 were 
merely stated to be negroes without further classification, 426 were 
" Creoles ", {. c, native Jamaicans ; and the neighboring islands had 
scattering representations. Sixty per cent. (1046) were of African 
birth. Of these loi were Mandingoes from Senegambia and the 
upper Niger; sixty were Chambas from the region since known as 
Liberia; seventy were Coromantees from the Gold Coast; thirty- 
three were Nagoes and twenty-four Pawpaws from the Slave Coast 
(Dahomey) ; and one hundred and eighty-five were Eboes and 
ninety-seven Mocoes from the Bight of Benin. All of the fore- 
going were from regions north of the equator. From the southern 
tropic there were one hundred and eighty-five Congoes. one hundred 
and sixty-five Mungolas, and ninety-four Angolas. The remaining 
thirty were scattering and mostly from places wliich I have not 
been able to identify in niaflSj^ old or new. Onl}- one, a Gaza, was 
positively from the east coasB^bl" Africa. 

8 A file for 1803 is preserved in tlie Charleston Library, Charleston, S. C. 
The tabulation here used was generously made for me by Dr. Charles S. Boucher 
of the University of Michigan. 



556 U. B. Phillips 

The Congoes and Coromantees, the tribal stocks with which 
Worthy Park was chiefly concerned, were as wide apart in their 
characteristics as negro nature permitted. The former were noted 
for lightness of heart, mildness of temper, and dullness of intellect. 
Of the latter Christopher Codrington, governor of the Leeward 
Islands, wrote in 1701 to the British Board of Trade: 

The Corramantes ... are not only the best and most faithful of our 
slaves, but are really all born Heroes. There is a difference between them 
and all other negroes beyond what 'tis possible for your Lordships to 
conceive. There never was a raskal or coward of that nation, intrepid to 
the last degree, not a man of them but will stand to be cut to pieces with- 
out a sigh or groan, grateful and obedient to a kind master, but impla- 
cably revengeful when ill-treated. My Father, who had studied the 
genius and temper of all kinds of negroes 45 years with a very nice 
observation, would say, Noe man deserved a Corramante that would not 
treat him like a Friend rather than a Slave.'' 

Bryan Edwards endorsed the staunchness and industry of the Coro- 
mantees, but attributed to them the plotting of the serious Jamaica 
revolt of 1760. 

A large proportion of the fugitive slaves in custody were de- 
scribed as bearing brands on their breasts or shoulders. It is not 
surprising to find in a Worthy Park inventory " i silver mark LP 
for negroes ". Edwards wrote that a friend of his who had bought 
a parcel of young Ebo and Coromantee boys told him that at the 
branding, 

when the first boy, who happened to be one of the Eboes, and the stout- 
est of the whole, was led forward to receive the mark, he screamed 
dreadfully, while his companions of the same nation manifested strong 
emotions of sympathetic terror. The gentleman stopt his hand; but the 
Koromantyn boys, laughing aloud, and, immediately coming forward of 
their own accord, offered their bosoms undauntedly to the brand, and 
receiving its impression without flinching in the least, snapt their fingers 
in exultation over the poor Eboes.i° 

The prevalence of unusually cruel customs among the tribes of the 
Gold Coast'' may account in part for the fortitude of the Coro- 
mantees. 

Worthy Park bought nearly all of its hardware, dry goods, drugs, 
and sundries in London, and its herrings for the negroes and salt 
pork and beef for the white staff in Cork. Staves and heading were 
procured locally, but hoops were imported. Corn was cultivated 

Q Calendar of State Papers, Colonial Series, America and West Indies, 1701. 

pp. 720-721. 

10 Edwards, The History, Civil and Commercial, of the British Colonies in the 
West Indies (Philadelphia, 1806), II. 275, 276. 

11 Cf. A. B. Ellis, The Tshi-Speaking Peoples of the Gold Coast of West 
Africa (London, 1887), chap. XI. 



A Jamaica Slave Plantation 557 

between the rows in some of the cane fields on the plantation, and 
some guinea-corn was bought from neighbors. The negroes raised 
their own yams and other vegetables, and doubtless pigs and poultry 
as well. Plantains were, likely to be plentiful, and the island abounded 
in edible land crabs. 

Every October cloth was issued, at the rate of seven yards of 
osnaburgs, three of checks, and three of baize for each adult, and 
proportionately for children. The first was to be made into coats, 
trousers, and frocks, the second into shirts and waists, the third into 
bedclothes. The cutting and sewing were done in the cabins. A hat 
and a cap were also issued to each slave old enough to go to the field, 
and a clasp-knife to each one above the age of the third gang. The 
slaves' feet were not pinched by shoes. 

The Irish provisions cost annually about £300, and the English 
supplies about iiooo, not including such extra outlays as that of 
£1355 in 1793 for new stills, worms, and coppers. Local expendi- 
tures were probably reckoned in currency. Converted into sterling, 
the salary list amounted to about £500, and the local outlay for 
medical services, wharfage, and petty supplies came to a like amount. 
Taxes, manager's commissions, and the depreciation of apparatus 
must have amounted collectively to £800. The net death-loss of 
slaves, not including that from the breaking-in of new negroes, 
averaged about two and a quarter per cent. ; that of the mules and 
oxen ten per cent. When reckoned upon the numbers on hand in 
1796 when the plantation, with 470 slaves, was operating with no 
outside help, these losses, which must be replaced by new purchases 
if the scale of output was to be maintained, amounted to about £900. 
Thus a total of £3000 sterling is reached as the average current ex- 
pense in years when no mishaps occurred. 

The crops during the years of the record averaged 311 hogsheads 
of sugar, sixteen hundredweight each, worth in the island about £15 
sterling per hogshead, ^^ and 133 puncheons of rum, no gallons each, 
worth about £10 per puncheon. The value of the average crop was 
thus about £6000, and the net earnings of the establishment not above 
£30CXD. The investment in slaves, mules, and oxen was about £28,- 
000, and that in land, buildings, and equipment, according to the 
general reckoning of the island authorities, reached a similar sum." 
The net earnings in good years were thus barely more than five per 

12 Owing to bad seasons, the crop on Worthy Park in 1796 fell to 268 hogs- 
heads; but the shortness of the crop at large caused an exceptional rise in sugar 
prices, which kept plantation earnings that year at least as high as the normal. 

13 In the dearth of original data on Jamaica prices of land, slaves, and 
produce, I have depended mainly on Bryan Edwards (vol. III., book V., chapter 3), 
after checking up his figures as far as has been practicable. 



558 U. B. Phillips 

cent, on the investment ; but the liability to hurricanes, earthquakes, 
fires, epidemics, and mutinies would lead conservative investors to 
reckon the safe expectations considerably lower. A mere pestilence 
which carried ofif about sixty mules and two hundred oxen on 
Worthy Park in 1793-1794 wiped out more than a year's earnings. 
Bryan Edwards^* gave statistics showing that between 1772 and 
1791 more than one-third of the 767 sugar plantations in Jamaica 
had gone through bankruptcy, fifty-five had been abandoned, and 
forty-seven new ones established. It was generally agreed that, 
within the limits of efficient operation, the larger a plantation was, 
the better its prospect for net earnings. But though Worthy Park 
had more than twice the number of slaves that the average planta- 
tion employed, it was barely paying its way. 

Ulrich B. Phillips. 

14 Edwards, vol. I., book II., appendix 2. 



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